We tend to take the use of water for granted, especially in the United States. This is unfortunate as it’s a luxury that, while most of us have it easily at hand, many other parts of the world struggle with. Clean water might be easy to come by for most townships and cities across our nation but that’s only because of the extremely hardwork of civic authorities, tax payers and private filtration, pipe and filtration companies. In other parts of the world, even basic water safety is an issue that they contend with every day. Some of these countries struggle to install maintain even simple machines, a backwash filter or basic filtration systems for instance, due to poverty or unfortunate circumstances that they cannot control. We all have to do our parts to make sure we live up to what we’ve been given but how can we start? It can seem difficult but there are several ways and, with a little thought, most of them are straightforward and easy to start. Here are a few ways to improve your water usage.

Reducing and reusing
Before we can get into the use of the backwash filter and other inventions, we need to start with the very basics of home water usage. Take the case of the theoretical family the Smiths. The Smiths live in a small family condo on the California coast. They have a yard, a large garden, two dogs and two kids. It’s a nice life and the view is great but there’s a problem. Because of the drought and the location they live, their water bill is extremely high. So what are they supposed to do about this exactly? You’ve probably already guessed the answer. Reducing the overall amount of water that they use each month would be a perfect way to start. The less water they use, the lower their water bill will be and the less potential there is for cross contamination of water that would then have to go a filtration plant to be cleaned. You might think these publicly funded filtration systems are efficient and they are. That’s not quite the problem. Much like your standard backwash filter, the uv filtration system and other systems that government water plants tend to use work extremely well and do their jobs correctly. That’s not the problem. It lies underneath.
The path and flow of energy
The fundamental problem that the Smiths have is that the very use of water in our society costs energy. That might seem small but it’s actually quite a large problem that’s not easy to solve. See, it’s not the amount of water they use persay. They could even buy a whole home water treatment system and be alright. But even whole home water purification systems use a lot of energy. And that’s just for one household. Think about how much energy is used in every water management plant for every city across the world. To clean all that water takes a lot of power and a lot of replacing filters. It’s possible, of course and all of our advanced industrial societies wouldn’t exist without it. But reducing that massive energy use starts at the individual level. Hence our case with the Smiths.
Other ways to help
There are other ways to keep your water use low and the water that you do use safe as well. As we’ve mentioned before, you could use a backwash filter or a home filter to clean your water before use. This keeps your home protected from potential pathogens and also cleans the water a first time so the second time around it takes less effort. There is no guarantee the water will be easier to clean, obviously, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the effort. You can also help participate in monthly or yearly municipal events where citizens go and clean up various local waterways. This is a bit more of a direct way to help but the more people help the faster the work goes. Townships and cities can even wholly depend on this sort of volunteer, part time effort!